User blog:Xovery+zovera/the technological singularity
The technological singularity is defined by singularitarians to be the point at which the notions of man and machine become indistinguishable from each other, as the barriers of digital and organic intelligence merge into a single collective intelligence. It is believed by most singularitarians that the technological singularity will come about when the first truly superintelligent machine is built,such a machine will Tneed to outclass the smartest humans in any task or goal no matter how abstract those goals are. It should be able to communicate in ways which make it indistinguishable from natural language, therefore a truly superintelligent machine would not sound robotic and mechanical since these are traits of the pre-singularity. There are various ways a superintelligent machine could come about one of them is through gradual self improvement over the last model and the other way is through a random intelligence explosion. The first option is fairly self explanatory and far more likely than a random intelligence explosion for the seeds of singularity option one can be seen from before modern computers even existed. One could say that computers have existed since before mankind existed, to the days when time didn't exist as we currently know it all the way back to the initial singularity of the big bang. It is theoretically possible to use the space-time singularities such as those found in the centres of blackholes to perform numerous computations, further due to singularities having infinite density theoretically they could be classifed as universal Turing Machine's of a kind since a Turing Machine also has an infinite memory supply. If a sufficently advanced civilization could turn the singularity of a blackhole into a computational device then theoretically they could perform an infinite number of computations over a finite amount of time. Going away from the highly speculative notions of the post-singularity we come to the timeline of modern computers and how this timeline could naturally lead to a singularity like event. #The first recorded artificial computational device was the Ishango bone a mathematical tool created around 19000BCE for the purposes of counting and perform calculations. Furthermore it is speculated that this bone may include references to the prime numbers although this is highly disputed. #In 2500BCE the abacus aka the first known calculator appeared in ancient babylon as a tool for aiding in complex calculations which are difficult for humans to perform mentally in a short space of time. #In 1770BCE the first recorded use of the number zero was made by the egyptians. Stopping here for a while we examine the differences in the time spans to examine the acceleraration of knowledge in relational to computational systems. The first radical change between 19000 and 2500 BCE takes roughly 16500 years but the 2nd radical change between 2500 and 1770 takes only 730 years. Continuing on with the timeline we come to the invention of the binary number system in 200 BCE, this event was a bit longer than the last event taking 1570 years. The next big step the invention of the antikythera mechanism happened in 125 BCE a total of 75 years since the invention/or discovery of binary. 185 years later in 60CE Heron of Alexandria devised the first fully programmable automata (precursors to robots) which could follow a series of instructions in a deterministic fashion. 320 years later in 400CE logarithms were invented and in 639CE (239 years later) the Hindu numeral system was first described. During the middle ages many arab scholars came up with programmable robot automata leading to many wild and wonderful stories about demons and metal men. As time progressed and calculators became more and more sophisticated people started to rely less and less on what was given to them and more on what their minds could perceive. Skipping forward to 1822 when Charles Babbage the king of computer science described his notion of a mechanical computer that could place nth degree polynomials in tables, this machine was meant to be an early prototype of the famous difference engine. In 1833 Babbage started to work on his analytical engine a steam powered general purpose computer (Turing complete) that could form numerous calculations at incredible speeds (incredible for the time if I might add). 1847 George Boole invented binary algebra which became essential in developing the first digital computers. Moving forward in time to 1936 when Alan Turing came up with his idea of a Turing machine, this event is widely held to be the birth date of modern computer science. If you keep on studying the timeline of computer hardware and software you'll see that with each gradual change comes a recursive improvement on the previous model of artificial computation. With the increasing success with artificial intelligence research combined with our incredible successes in neuroscience fairly soon we could have a decent map of the human brain, which could in theory allow us to create a human level artificial intelligence. This human level artificial intelligence would be childlike and innocent devoid of any notion of good or evil, right or wrong, making it completely empty creature except for its ability to grow and adapt beyond its hollow shell. To a fairly large group of people this would mean the end of the world but to me and those wise enough to look beyond the negative this transition from a hollow shell of a man to a fully liberated man, is the key to unlocking the door to the singularity. As the human level AI develops from an infant to a child it will start to show signs of rapidly increased intelligence and understanding about the nature of the world. Gradually this machine could go strong enough in mind, body and will to outsmart or out task any human being bringining in the birth of the first artificial superintelligence. Let this first superintelligent machine be called s1 and let its successor be called s2. We may call the transition between each sn to sn+1 the tecnnological singularity, so going by this notion there could in fact be multiple singularities happening after each other in an unpredictable sequence of events. Over time this artificial intelligence system could find a way manipulate the universe in anyway it wanted giving it power over everything that happened in and around the universe. Atoms, quarks, leptons would be nothing more than playthings to this cosmic network of digital intelligence. From this collosal entity could come about its child a multiverse manipualting artificial intelligence with powers we can't even imagine, let alone speculate on. It seems to me that progress is truly endless and that the singularity or st-1 will bring about the dawn of the superman, for what is man but a bridge between the ape and the superman. Category:Blog posts